


Paris Calling

by elle_nic



Series: Phone Home [1]
Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Pre-Slash, fiction&femslashevent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 00:11:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20105947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_nic/pseuds/elle_nic
Summary: Nigel miscalculates and Andy catches her flight.





	Paris Calling

**Author's Note:**

> A scene I had stuck in my head where Miranda completely spurns Andy. I'm gonna write more for this verse I think so don't panic about the ending.

It was glittery, was the only way Andy could manage to describe the gala she found herself attending. The chandeliers, the champagne, the _people_. It was all so… Glittery. She liked it, sort of, but it was rich in the way too much chocolate cake was, or CEOs or when men talked over women. It was unpleasant, but Andy had to be there. She owed Nigel big time and this was the only thing he’d asked of her. She happened to know why, too.

Her good friend from her _Runway_ days and her had kept in contact after her glorious fall from good grace from which she managed to land on her feet. After a few promotions after her stellar articles (if she did say so herself), she landed a job at _The Times_ and was living and working comfortably as a copyeditor with a promising amount of exposure to be promoted again. She had done so well, in fact, that her relatively recognisable by line had prompted Nigel Kipling, art director, to call her up for drinks. They got drunk two weekends in a row and had been close ever since.

He had had to beg her for two weeks to go with her to the event she was shielding her eyes from. He had really hooked her up a few months before with some contacts to further an article she was writing on the latest scandal in the fashion industry (nothing to do with _Her_, of course) and she had said, “I owe you, Nige”. She didn’t realise how seriously he took that. And he did take it very seriously.

She had to avert her eyes from her champagne that she held loftily in her hand, swinging with just the right amount of nonchalance to seem unbothered by all the pomp around her. Nigel had gone off to play social butterfly as she expected, so she was stuck at first with a group of Wall Street blazers before she got drowsy and walked away under the guise of wanting more champagne. Her glass was untouched.

She felt the fight or flight instinct trigger at some point on her journey to the bar and knew that She had arrived. She also knew that she now had to find a spot to hide where it didn’t look like she was hiding. She was so close to being out of New York and on the excursion of her life. She just needed to not draw any attention to herself until she could leave or until Miranda left.

From her little spot (between a healthy, leafy plant and the wallpapered wall) she could see Miranda’s descent into the common rabble. She looked as graceful as she usually was which was criminally so, but with as enamoured as Andy was, it was nearly unbearable, like looking at the sun for too long. Miranda just had the effect, and Andy was, when you got down to it, just the common rabble. Andy was okay with that. Nigel wasn’t. And so, she was at a strange fashion slash publishing world party. To be fair, the Venn diagram of the fashion and publishing world was basically a circle. Very incestuous.

“There you are,” Nigel said, gliding to her with his own brand of flamboyance that no other human could replicate.

“I’m hiding,” she said with false brightness. She didn’t want Nigel to be brought down by her poor mood.

“From exactly the reason I brought you along?”

“Right in one, Nige.”

“Andy, I just wish you’d come over with me and say hi,” Nigel said, exasperated. She chuckled quietly behind her flute.

“No one just says _hi_ to her, Nigel. I won’t go over and that’s all there is to it.”

“You never know until you-”

“No. I know, Nigel. I knew for nine months and I still know now. She doesn’t want to see me.”

For a moment, a moment of poor judgment, she thought Nigel was going to let the matter go with a graciousness that he certainly didn’t possess. Instead, he looped in arm with hers and _tugged_. She managed to stumble only slightly, but enough to displace her from her haven of hiddenness. She found herself commandeered across the room to the bar which was uncomfortably exposed for anyone to see. Andy knew the moment she had been spotted, and resigned herself to a single finger of good whiskey, knocking it back before turning to Nigel.

“Don’t call me tomorrow. I will be too angry at you to pick up the phone,” she managed before the gravity of the room changed to accommodate the force that was Miranda Priestly.

“Nigel,” a cool, untouchable voice uttered in greeting. Andy turned to look at her and sucked in a silent breath (a mistake, she realised when she inhaled her perfume). She was just… Well, Andy thought wryly, she really _was just_.

“Oh, Nigel. Did you not know you could come without a date?” Miranda’s gaze was sharper than broken glass and just as colourless. Her hair was viciously perfect, styled in her iconic coif. Fuck. She was so gorgeous. Andy wanted to cry.

Andy didn’t even wince. She knew this would happen and Nigel didn’t fucking listen to her. Now there’s going to be blood on her dress (A decadent cream colour and body forming to show off her body, in which she took great pride). Nigel did wince, but only slightly, like he could rescue the situation which he was now realising Andy was right about.

“Now, Miranda,” Nigel tried to laugh. Andy pitied him only for a moment before readying herself for the next blow.

“I’m going to get going now, Nigel,” Andy informed, turning purposely to avoid looking at Miranda any longer. “Thank you for inviting me, but we both know how illiterate I am with all this.” She leaned into a brief hug then pulled back.

“Oh?” Miranda goaded, “Wasn’t it that article on the silk scandal that just launched you into the national sphere of journalism?” Andy gritted her teeth to hold back her apologies for leaving her in Paris. They meant nothing to Miranda and they meant nothing to Andy anymore.

“It was certainly well-written enough to be considered so, yes,” she replied. She did not smile fakely like Miranda did. She, in a strange way she supposed, was too careful of upsetting Miranda any further, too cautious of making her think she was ingenuine further than a smile. But she would not just let Miranda have the lead without a fight.

“Oh, I see,” Miranda said horribly. Andy wanted to leave. She wanted more whiskey. She wanted to be back in Paris.

“You have grown bold, Andréa, but do not forget this,” she hissed, her smile spitting fire and vitriol in a perfect contradiction. “You are nothing, you are not interesting or successful without me,” Miranda snarled prettily. Andy was in love with her.

“I’m sure,” Andy said blandly. She relished Miranda’s blink of disbelief before she kissed Nigel on the cheek (she didn’t really want him to beat himself up about all this, but she’d make him suffer a little, later). “Bye bye, Nigel,” she said. She turned to Miranda, “Of all the people I’ve ever met, Miranda, you too have been my greatest disappointment.” She didn’t wait for another blink, though she knew one would come. She turned on her tall heels that she could walk in without stumbling, and felt the last of the whiskey leave her.

She didn’t cry in the cab. Didn’t cry when she got home. But a week later, when she boarded her plane to France for an extended assignment on the French bureaucracy, she felt her vision wobble and her hands shake. She felt the turbulence in the plane and laughed when she related to a great big hunk of metal. They were an hour into the flight when she calmed down, and she decided while she was in France that she’d make a wish in the first fountain she saw. She’d wish for another chance with a woman who she wanted to be able to love.

This time, perhaps, she’d use a coin and not a phone. 


End file.
